Remember Sheila Detoy / A police officer's bullet took her life, then came the vicious slander of her good name

Peter Keane

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, May 11, 2006

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Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez

Remember Sheila Detoy / A police officer's bullet took her life, then came the vicious slander of her good name

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SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD Sheila Detoy was killed by a San Francisco police officer on May 13, 1998. By all accounts, Sheila was a wonderful young girl. She was still just a child, so she had a child's optimism and dreams.

It is now eight years since she was shot dead by a plainclothes San Francisco police officer as she sat as a passenger in a car pulling out of a driveway. The officer was seeking another passenger in the car, a young man who had not shown up for a court appearance on a drug charge. He fired into the car and the bullet tore through Shiela's neck. She bled to death.

What happened next was horrible in its own right. With a cruelty that defies understanding, a department spokesperson issued an official statement just hours after she was killed. He said: "She was no innocent victim. She was trying to live the hip-hop lifestyle."

This cold, and completely false, characterization of Sheila was repeated in every television, radio and newspaper account of the shooting. It seemed that it was not enough that she was brutally slain. For some reason, her character and reputation had to be massacred along with her. So those who loved Sheila not only had to cope with her ghastly killing, they also had to watch as her memory was publicly trashed.

Everyone who knew Sheila knew she was a great kid with fine qualities and high values. They listened in agonized disbelief to what the San Francisco Police Department said about her. The official police message was sick and sadistic. Sheila was "not innocent." So conclude then that Sheila was bad. It was all her fault. She deserved to die.

From the beginning there were troubling questions about whether the officer who killed Sheila told the truth about what happened. The Office of Citizen Complaints investigated. It concluded that charges should be filed and that a hearing should be held to determine what really occurred. But the highest command level of the Police Department resisted any inquiry. Even worse, the department leaders stonewalled all attempts to get at the truth. Years passed until finally, because the Office of Citizen Complaints kept insisting, the pressure caused the San Francisco Police Commission to formally order the department to file the charges.

But even then, more years went by with legal challenges against any hearing being held. Lawyers for the Police Officers Association, San Francisco's police union, argued that the statute of limitations had run out because so much time elapsed before charges were filed. After dragging it out in court, The POA lawyers finally lost that argument before a Superior Court judge last year. But it was immediately appealed to the California Court of Appeal, where another slow dance of delay still continues.

Now, eight years after Sheila's death, my prediction is that there will never be a hearing on the charges. When the long, losing route through the courts by the POA finally plays out and a hearing is ultimately set, the officers involved will simply retire and that will be the end of it. So whatever the truth is about Sheila's killing, it will never be determined by an honest examination of the facts and the evidence.

But, whether the shooting was justified or not, nothing can ever excuse how the San Francisco Police Department violated Sheila by falsely saying she was a bad person who was to blame for her own killing. That was disgraceful and it festers shamefully on our city's history like an open wound. To try to close that wound we at least owe an apology to Sheila and to those who loved her.

Sheila was a beautiful kid. She was an innocent child of San Francisco of whom we should all be proud. It is time for us to ask her forgiveness.

Rest in peace, Sheila.

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